Another reason it appeals to me is that I think it's an example of manga that has significant crossover appeal for adults, which seems counterintuitive in some ways--why should I care that it appeal to adults, after all! But the art and the story have this understated elegance, and it really gets across in what feels to me to be an authentic depiction of childhood that dissonance between the mundane concerns of family and school and fitting in and this giant, consuming secret that these kids don't feel like they can talk to anyone about. It handles adolescent friendships really well, too. The art is often stark, the dialogue and narration spare, and it really feels like a book full of silences, while still feeling hopeful and engaged--the silence is not desolate, it is far more complex than that. The expressions conveying Shuichi's (nonverbalized) emotions about the gift of feminine hairclips from a classmate who reacts well to learning part of his secret, the way the genderswapped production of the Rose of Versailles in the kids' school reflects on their moments of difficulty and their desires and fears, as well as social interactions. I'm really looking forward to future volumes.

Also, because I'm a bookseller, I notice things like packaging. This book is being produced in America by Fantagraphics, who tend to do alternative-esque, tending more toward literary comics and graphic novels for an adult audience. The packaging reflects that, with its avant-garde typesetting on the cover, the fact that it is bound in high-quality hardcover format, the striking color against a black-and-white background. I am hoping this title wins awards, and I think it's an excellent choice to give to young people who ask for resources on gender identity. It confronts identity head-on without ignoring other aspects of a child's life, and the art is approachable and comforting. I'm glad to see manga of this literary quality to round out the more popular manga we see so much of (not that there's anything wrong with that! But it's good to have variety).

I want to think about the kinds of technologies I used to make that piece, and how I learned to use those technologies and what community conventions helped frame my approach. It's interesting because one of the articles I'm considering using with my final paper is resonating with what the actual experience of creating this fanvid was about. Right now I'm reading ""Tech-savviness" meets multiliteracies: Exploring adolescent girls' technology-mediated literacy practices", an article by Kelly Chandler-Olcott. In the first part of the paper, before the case study research discussion, she discusses how theorists have to think about the use of technological tools in specificity within their context, arguing "The use of particular technological tools [....] mediates participants' pursuit of particular outcomes as well as construction of various identities." I think, in terms of the sophistication and possibilities offered by a technological tool, as well as the ways mentors stamp their preferences on people they teach to use a certain tool, those minor interactions and possibilities and limitations really get shaped by the tool, that technology provides a huge amount of structure for the shapes of communities. I think that's true offline, as well, but particularly true in online communities.

Just thinking about the kinds of software and online platform tools I used in that vid--I used firefox, safari, megaupload, handbrake, livejournal, mpeg streamclip, twitter, gmail chat, imovie (until I abandoned it because all of my mentors were familiar with Final Cut), garageband, itunes, final cut express, mediafire, VLC media player, Avatar fansites and wikis, youtube, UW webspace, and my mac's OS and native finder tools. Some of those tools (livejournal, twitter, fansites and wikis) were to facilitate content information that helped me make decisions about the vid. Some were more accessing tools that helped me acquire source and export works in progress and the final version (megaupload, itunes, UW webspace, mediafire, youtube). Some of these were to help me get technical support on using the software and help me work through technical problems (gchat, twitter). Many were to help me manipulate the files and cut them into appropriate pieces, change their file type, and allow me to reassemble hundreds of pieces into a self-determined whole (VLC, MPEG Streamclip, Handbrake, Final Cut, iMovie, Garageband). Others allowed me meta-acess to the programs and sites I needed (my mac's OS, firefox, safari).

I learned almost all of these tools within social contexts. I learned all of them--even ones that seem so normal and ubiquitous now, like my strong preference for Firefox over Safari, came from social interactions in which I was encouraged to try the tool in question, had enough about it explained to me by a mentor until I could use it well enough for whichever purpose, whether that was making a podcast or converting a video to use on my ipod or something as complicated as making a vid. All of those aggregate small interactions have strengthened and built my portfolio of technological tools until I was comfortable enough with enough of them to attempt something as sophisticated and painstaking as vidding. I could never have made a vid if all I had had to work with was a formal workshop on iMovie--though I think that could work for some people who are more solitary learners than I am.

(Screenshot of Final Cut with my project vid open and clips assembled on the timeline in finished order)

Anyhow, I don't have a lot of conclusions except that I like research that explicitly acknowledges informal learning practices and community-centered engagement with technology. I certainly think there's a place for formal instruction into technology, but I also know that, at least in my own experience, I tend to have a better grasp of tools if I learn them through a mixture of trial-and-error and mentoring, and I only feel truly conversant with something if I am assisting others in learning it as well and taking on a mentoring role. I tend to think having an element of play adds a sense of accomplishment, too.

It's one of those books where the description on the book flap is annoyingly cagey about what the book is actually about, even though the protagonist's 'secret' is revealed fairly early on. The description on the website is a bit more forthcoming, though. SPOILER: it's about a poor kid, Travis who's functionally illiterate. His grandpa is his primary caregiver and they've just moved to a new town. He is in mourning for the dog who was his closest companion and vanished, distrusts his grandpa's attempts to sober up, and has some anger issues. He meets a girl named Velveeta who lives in the trailer park and who has also recently suffered a loss, in her case the older man who lived in a neighboring trailer and who mentored and encouraged her where her screw-up mother never did.

The story is well paced and does a really good job of getting into the heads of both Travis and Velveeta. They both work as characters and their mistakes and miscommunications feel so natural, as does Schmatz's work showing Travis's difficult slog toward literacy. He has an inspiring teacher, yes, but that teacher has to do a lot of work to break through his shell and he never totally trusts him, though he does come to respect his teaching. I also liked that this book dealt with the issue of peers teaching one another, and that process didn't go smoothly. There were a few notable moments where Velveeta attempts to teach Travis and her approach hits some of his buttons, shutting him down and making him angry.

Schmatz really got well into the different ways each of these characters experience and respond to being poor. Travis's home life with his (recovering) alcoholic grandfather, and the extremely barbed relationship they have, was particularly interesting. Velveeta's family were a little harder to puzzle out, partly because her perspective came from diary entries addressed to a recently deceased father-ish figure. Because she's writing to someone who knows her family situation, she doesn't explain who most of them are, so that was confusing.

I also read Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani, which is a YA novel coming out in February (I snagged an advance reading copy).

I really liked it, even though I'm not usually very fond of epistolary books. This one is constructed entirely in letters exchanged between Meena, a young Indian immigrant living in New York City, and her pen pal River Justice, a poor coalminer's son living in Kentucky. I think the book tried a little too hard to hit on too many Issues in their personal lives--both having absent fathers who have to live elsewhere to work, River's mother's mental health problems, Meena's family's difficulties with immigration and her family's illegal housing situation in a rent-controlled home with a nasty landlord. But those details, while making the story busy, also really made each character's context come alive and their feelings mattered on a subjective level. The narrative did a good job of situating and humanizing these very different kids, finding resonances between them as they navigate their class, access to technology, political opinions, cultural estrangements, and personal happiness and grievance. It's a surprisingly nuanced book.

The transnational emotional baggage Meena has to deal with--especially concerning having left her beloved grandmother, who practically raised her for several years until Meena's family could afford to bring her over, was particularly heartfelt. And the ways each kid found to console one another, share each others' culture and perspective, were really well done in this book. I liked that even when one child took pains to 'correct' the other on some issue, the other didn't necessarily come around on it--it felt like fairly natural interactions. The details about River not wanting to hear about Meena shaving her legs, for instance, were great. I was sad when this story ended, I wanted to know how their relationship would change once they met face to face.

I'm going to come back to the question of intended audience on this one, because I think it's really important to how one evaluates literature about minority groups, especially when that literature carries a didactic message. A good book will be written in such a way as to make it available to a variety of audiences, but in the end the author makes certain narrative choices that make it easy to determine who the book is for. I usually look at the point of view character, the plot, and the way other characters think about the minority character in question, as well as which characters are portrayed with any amount of agency and which ones get active character development.

I usually contrast Luna and Parrotfish in terms of YA trans lit, and interestingly, Rockefeller and I seem to have somewhat differing opinions on these books. I don't think Luna is as wonderful a portrayal as it is often lauded to be, and the reason for this is that it reads very much as a Sympathize With The Victims book to me. The protagonist of the book is a straight teen girl, Regan, whose sibling, whose given name is Liam but who increasingly adopts the female identity of Luna, is MTF trans. The book focuses largely on Regan's coming to terms with her sibling's transition (and often fails to use appropriate pronouns as part of this confusion). The book very much focuses on how someone might adjust to having someone important in their life transition, and Luna's preternatural perfection in most things make her a somewhat abstract character, and the moments in which she develops are often more concerned with Regan's emotional response and development than Luna's, as Regan witnesses increasing strife with the family, helps Luna on a shopping trip for women's clothing, etc. In the end, Luna pays a heavy price for claiming her identity--she moves away, effectively estranged from her parents who do not accept her. This kind of literature can be instructive for readers who are trying to understand the trans people in their lives, but its message of hope to trans youth directly is... not very hopeful. In general I find Peters writes Victim Stories around LGBT topics, especially trans--the short story in grl2grl is somewhat brutal and forbidding for the trans guy protagonist.

I think Parrotfish is a much stronger book because it provides a fairly well-adjusted and convincingly, if not universally, accepted transgender protagonist/point of view character. I do take Rockefeller's point that it dwells too much on gender stuff to the detriment of the pacing and plot development. I think it's important to have books that portray trans characters that speak *to trans youth* and not primarily or, it sometimes feels, ONLY, to straight readers curious to learn more about trans life.

I went and checked the American Indians in Children's Literature blog to see what Debbie has to say, and unsurprisingly she really likes this book. It's good to have her perspective on this, too, because the book felt very authentic to me, very much like what this girl's experience of her family and community would be today, and the art was so evocative of a particular and particularly modern (if, at this point, a little bit dated) life in this culture.

I think the things that really worked for me were the little details--the living room with the television set seemed so lived in and so descriptive of the family, it didn't have that generic 'this is A Living Room' style of art where only the things that are remarked upon by the text are shown. This book had so much realistic detail in the art and so much resonance between the content and the style and shape in the repetitions in the text, which altogether brought out such a living experience of participating in this ritual.

I also really liked the way the book brought out both the protagonist's agency and her community. We got to see her making a commitment to learn the dance and find the things she needs for her dress, and also her female role models who supported her commitment and aided her when she asked. It's a good book from a gender perspective, too, as we see a realistic portrayal of family broadly construed, and a range of women in different careers and capacities helping the girl out. It reads as somewhat idealistic next to the bitterness in Absolutely True Diary, but I think this story is both believable and accurate as a particular representation--not all Native communities and families live in the kind of poverty Junior experiences growing up, though some do. It helps to have both realities shown, to give a broader sense than you can draw from just one book's depiction of a native culture.

I really liked this book a lot, and I'm happy to see it's being reprinted.

GENE LUEN YANG HOW ARE YOU SO AMAZING. He was so nice and genial, funny and smart! I mean, I have a certain background as an indie comics reader, so I expected his lecture to cover a lot of familiar ground, but I found myself FASCINATED by his discussion of the divergent roots of converging American and Japanese comic styles and creators, especially given the topic of my last post. I didn't know the thing about Tezuka getting the classic anime eyes idea from Bambi, for instance. My epic braincrush on Yang has grown exponentially.

I do have a niggling disagreement with Yang about how awesome Scott McCloud is. I recently read Making Comics and, while that book is five years old and a lot has happened in those intervening years in terms of manga being embraced by American audiences, his chapter on manga struck me as... appropriative? Idealistic? I'm not sure, but it left me feeling a bit cold after having appreciated quite a lot of the practical advice he gives in the bulk of the book. Of course, a person doesn't have to be perfect in order to be influential, and there are certainly worse people Yang could have dressed as for Halloween (which had me laughing SO HARD).

I really appreciated the time Yang spent on his personal journey around comics and culture, too. Some of the things he said resonated (I also got flak from teachers in grade school for reading comics!), and some of it was bringing a perspective I don't have as a white American. I like his approach to finding harmony and bridging apparent divides--it certainly works well for him, judging by his work.

After the lecture I ducked back out into the lobby where we were selling the books and found my boss sitting there reading American Born Chinese. My boss has always been one of those people who adamantly refuses to give comics a try--even ones that are super relevant and beloved by the bookstore's core community, like Alison Bechdel's work! But here she was, reading the comic book, and she looks up and says in a totally shocked voice, 'This is really good!' Yes, yes it is! What have I been telling you for years, now? It was like this great little moment supporting that shift Yang spoke about of how denigrated comics as a form was and how it's finally gaining some respectability as worthwhile literature in recent years. I think Yang is totally right that right now is an excellent time for comics.

Also, on a shallow note, OMG AVATAR COMICS. That show is quite literally one of my favorite shows ever, and I can never get enough of Aang and the gang, and Yang is one of the few writers I would trust completely to continue the series and adapt it well to the medium. Often when you get comics continuations of shows it feels like a shill by the company to squeeze more out of a property without investing in the heavy costs of filming a show anymore, with a few exceptions. In those cases the art might be lacking or the stories and presentation simply ill-adapted to the comics medium, but I trust Yang to do a fabulous job, even more so after hearing his lecture and the depth of his knowledge and appreciation for both American and Asian comics and comics histories. Avatar is such a surprisingly well-done merging of American animation with some anime influences and Asian-styed secondary fantasy world/plot that, shockingly, seems to respect and honor the Asian influence rather than come off as appropriative. It's a remarkable piece of television and it has a devoted fanbase and, happily, will now enjoy a future in good hands in a new medium, as well as a sequel show!

In conclusion, and just because I love it and I'm all excited about the comic now, one of my favorite Avatar fanvids!

I don't follow YouTube vidding culture as much as I follow blog-based fanvids (though many of the vidders I follow also crosspost their work to YouTube, the culture of commentary and critique and recommendation I am primarily involved with happens on blogging platforms like livejournal.com), and most of the vidders whose work I do follow vid live-action sources, usually television shows that already have a significant fan following. I have been a co-curator of the Vid Party at WisCon, which has meant I've been involved in some interesting discussions around live media vidding cultures and anime music video (AMV) cultures. For a brief overview, see the Fanlore article on AMVs. Without getting into the very different cultures of interaction and commentary and platform and just looking at the fan products themselves, in general (but with many exceptions!) live action media fanvids tend to focus on emotions, relationships, the personal arcs of characters, and/or creating new narratives from canon sources, while AMVs tend to focus more on technical mastery of effects, layers, and original animation to create a sensory experience that is often more abstract than narrative. Creators of media fanvids tend to skew overwhelmingly female, AMV creators tend toward male.

For reference to live action vids, and also because I think it's an interesting blend of skills drawn directly or indirectly from both communities, here is a Harry Potter fanvid we showed at the event I helped organize in May which includes source from the first 7 films and reflects a lot of the emotional connection and fannish nostalgia about the impending final film, as well as a certain amount of technical skill in the use of layers and effects, which are becoming more widely accessible as the software programs become more sophisticated and the culture of remix video creators gets larger and more complex in terms of skill, creativity and experimentation, and mentorship:

Which brings me back to the My Little Pony fanvid! This show, ostensibly for young children, has been remarkably popular among adults, including a significant male contingent known as 'bronies' (which is very unusual, especially considering the target demographic for this show is little girls). Not unsurprisingly, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (MLP:FIM) is a very popular fandom for fanvidding, and even has its own acronym (PMVs--Pony Music Videos). What I find interesting is that these PMV vidders seem to take conventions from media fanvidding and amvs, but don't necessarily come from either background conceptually. For instance, the "Fabulous Bringjoys" vidder paid attention to synching characters' mouth movements with lyrics, a concern highly valued/critiqued in AMV circles but almost completely ignored in live action vidding communities. However, the focus on character work and the detailed interplay between the footage and the lyrics harks more toward live action vidding values. The animation is mostly unedited apart from clipping, as well--the lack of effects and the focus on more literal vs. abstract narratives make me read this as more a live action vid than an AMV.

This great thing about this vid in particular is that it sets up what should be an incongruity--the song is a rock song by an all-male American band (My Chemical Romance), and the official music video and album describe a gritty, violent sci-fi post-apocalyptic world reminiscent of Mad Max or Blade Runner. To set pretty sparkly ponies to this song should be a straight up parody, but it actually seems to function on a more interesting level, pulling out a narrative from the video source of strong, empowered, courageous and personally diverse pony characters standing up against enemies and fighting and sacrificing for causes they believe in (a narrative thread which is borne out by the canon source). In that sense, the song upends the viewer because it actually works on a straightforward level--showcasing the ways in which the pony characters are powerful and committed as opposed to the gendered stereotypes we might assume about their stories based on the color palette and obvious intended audience for the show. Narratively, it's NOT a stereotypical 'girl' show and cannot thus be 'dismissed' (though I feel the need to insert a comment here about why we feel the NEED to dismiss 'girl things', or that we as a culture automatically expect girls to be interested in pink non-threatening characters and situations)--sexism is alive and well, and this vid does a pretty good job of highlighting that in a peculiarly performative and fun way.

The whole My Little Pony phenomenon is kind of heartening from a feminist perspective--after watching the first few episodes I clicked around YouTube and found several filmed class presentations of bronies giving talks about the show, and seeing teenaged/early 20-year-old guys talk earnestly about the positive aspects of a cast of almost entirely female characters is really heartening.

The question of audience, though, is really tricky for me, especially in context of LIS629 and focusing on the needs of children in a way I don't habitually do. Obviously the online fannish presence for this show is overwhelmingly adult, and possibly majority male. What, then, about the INTENDED audience--little girls? Kids who want to explore transmedia possibilities are more likely than not to find related content that's not appropriate for or intended for them, simply because adult males already have significant presence in most internet spaces, and their access to technology and skill to use it effectively mean that adult creations like this fanvid are more likely to get widespread interest than something created by a ten-year-old and posted to youtube about their favorite show. A cursory googling reveals a great deal of marketing aimed at children, with the only significant web space intended specifically for kids being the Hasbro website, which is great for some kinds of experience but for more active/creative things, you are not likely to find a platform supportive of remix video content or other user generated content like fanfiction or fanart.

Moreover, since so much remix video work (or, to extend the question, fan-fiction and fanart) is self-taught or mentored between amateurs in order to gain the technical skills necessary, as well as entry into one of many cultures surrounding this form of creative expression and commentary, and that kind of thing is less likely to happen on company-sponsored sites. I think it's important for kids to have spaces to meet one another and help each other gain skills, not only technical skills but also collaborative and critical, active engagement skills, that will serve them well as media consumers. In a fandom like MLP:FIM, where is the appropriate space for children to create that community?

I'll begin by responding to some questions/reactions I have half-formed in response to the Cai readings, especially the one for yesterday. I don't always agree with Cai, and Chapter 3 was really no exception, though I appreciate his thoroughness and willingness to take a stance on an issue rather than attempting to present multiple viewpoints without commentary or real criticism, as if they are equivalent when they are not. Having a political objective to the work as a whole certainly supports that, but I do like that he does a lot of debunking.

This chapter was mostly about whether outsiders to a culture can accurately represent a culture through 'imagination' as opposed to direct experience. Cai seems to conclude that no, an outsider probably cannot do this leap of imagination well, but some have done a pretty good job after a lot of research and attempts at internalizing a culture. I agree with the points he makes late in the chapter that an active imagination cannot substitute for real-world cultural specificities, and thought the critical readings he gave of the two books about Chinese railroad workers and the differences between them (one a well-done depiction, one a poor depiction) were constructively chosen and discussed. I like Cai best when he gets into details--the scale of authenticity he adapts from Banks really works for me and gets away from the simplistic, dualist yes/no arguments Cai had set up at the beginning of the chapter by getting into degrees of cross-cultural incorporations a person can experience, and noting how the surface level of having read a few books might not make for adequate research into the culture, while more in-depth personal experiences and commitment to the new culture may make an outsider knowledgeable enough to take on the task of writing an appropriately authentic piece.

I think one thing I always flinch at with Cai are his 'should's. Should an author do research on a culture before attempting to represent it? Of course! But I think he often slides past the responsibility (and power!) of the reader and/or recommender in this equation. I guess I find the insistence on the author as the site of importance a bit frustrating, because in a lot of ways that focuses us on the individual decisions and relegates the systemic to the reader. Why are the reader's (or audience's, or editor's, or librarian's, or...) decisions also not personal--why does Cai mention so frequently whether an author 'should' write something and not ask whether a publisher--or, ultimately, a reader--'should' buy it?

I think that while Cai is very strong on the sociopolitical justifications, he lacks a serious and sustained evaluation of the economic aspects of multicultural children's publishing, and that's a weakness in his approach, at least in the chapters I've seen so far. Authors can write and research to their little hearts' content, but who is choosing their work for publication and what justifications are they presenting for taking a risk on that work? What (racist!) market forces are at work, and how can a conscientious reader--or publisher--work within the system, or outside it, to make sure authentic voices are heard, as opposed to simply publishing the white person's meditation on Chinese culture they wrote on the strength of imagination more than experience or research?

I was somewhat frustrating by Cai closing with the example of Staples who had the luxury of being able to fly across the world and spend a great deal of time in the company of the culture she wished to write about. Yes, she may have done an excellent job, but the fact that that kind of direct research for certain cultures may be out of the means of the vast majority of authors of any ethnicity, and the fact that there are economic, international, linguistic, cultural, and racial forces at work to keep insiders from Pakistani culture (to follow the Staples example) from writing an insider's account of life in the tribes is... important to take into account. I don't have answers, but I do have certain frustrations that Cai doesn't address to my satisfaction. I am not sure 'can, or should an author write a book about a culture not their own?' is the really vital question. I think the more important question is 'what makes inauthentic depictions profitable and more widely acclaimed, and how can we work to change that?'. All this focus on the author is great, but I think there's a lot of power in the reader, the bookseller, the teacher, the librarian, the publisher in supporting or ignoring in/authentically multicultural works--authors aren't out there creating things and making money off them in a vaccuum.